It’s rare to spot brands that seek to celebrate the individuality of every user as opposed to following the modern trends. It’s a brand that drives and promotes self-expression, while being socially minded to the extent of contributing a significant portion of its sales to a foundation.

The brand is called MAKE Beauty, which forayed into the Middle East this year in partnership with Al Tayer Group. MAKE Beauty offers 200 SKUs that are hypoallergenic, paraben-free and not tested on animals. Almost 30% of MAKE Beauty’s lines are vegan.

“We are a hip indie beauty brand from New York,” asserts co-founder and business director William Smolen. “We became famous for our one-of-its-kind products that no one makes in the market. We can make them because of our founder, Nikos Mouyiaris, is one of the world’s biggest contract cosmetics manufacturers. He has been incubating and manufacturing many of the world’s luxury make-ups and colour cosmetics for over 40 years now. We have an incredible product development team having a leadership position in the industry.”

Having seen success from his endeavours, Mouyiaris not only founded MAKE Beauty but was keen to give back to the society. He started the We See Beauty Foundation supporting women-led, worker-owned cooperative businesses across the Americas – which means everyone has ownership rights in the company. The idea was to create a brand – MAKE Beauty – that could support this initiative.

“We give 10% of our sales, not profits, to the We See Beauty Foundation. We like to position the brand in a manner never seen before. To us, a luxury product isn’t an expensive object on the table but defined by the ingredients and the sense of purpose,” Smolen avers.